


Different Class

by fluorescentgrey



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Killing Eve AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24653788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluorescentgrey/pseuds/fluorescentgrey
Summary: There was a very handsome man in very stylish clothes running across the street in Remus’s direction.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 58





	Different Class

**Author's Note:**

  * For [floggingink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/floggingink/gifts).



There was a very handsome man in very stylish clothes running across the street in Remus’s direction. The evening breeze had tangled his dark hair in the twinned collars of his bespoke blue tweed shirt and flannel-lined navy Mackintosh. He wore slim black wool trousers and a Burberry belt with the buckle hidden behind a monumentally ostentatious golden horse. His shoes were surprisingly plain, which was the last thing Remus had the chance to notice before he was accosted. 

“Wouldn’t go that way if I were you,” said the very handsome man, resting a spindly white hand against the breast of Remus’s brand new and almost-as-nice rain mac, which had been gifted to him, along with the rest of the outfit he was wearing, all of which was so much too nice for him that he had nearly burned it upon first opening the bag it had all been left in on the doorstep of his flat in Hackney. He was a paper-pushing detective in name only currently under robust suspicion and likely surveillance in the department for having suggested a connection between a series of apparently unrelated murders, so he hadn’t bothered to bring anything in to be fingerprinted: not the clothes, not the bag, not the note that had come with it, which had invited Remus to dinner at one of the fanciest restaurants in Kensington. The very handsome man’s hand was warm even through the layers and there was a strength, like a boxer’s, to the gesture, which Remus would reflect on later. “There’s some kind of big pileup on the high street.” 

“A pileup?” 

Remus had basic first aid skills, a general sense of civic duty, and a streak of voyeurism to his personality enough that he felt an urge to run toward the scene of the accident. But the very handsome man gently turned him one hundred eighty degrees with the pressure of his hand at Remus’s shoulder. “It’s bad,” he said. “Blood everywhere and things.” 

“Damn,” Remus said. “Supposed to meet somebody up the church street.” 

And yet they were walking off together toward the edge of the park. A police car wailed by, howling like a dog. 

The very handsome man had incredibly long strides, despite not being particularly tall. The shoes were truly mystifying. They were scuffed — scuffed! — at the toe, even as the rest of him was immaculate. “Come to dinner with me instead,” he suggested. 

“You!” 

The eyes which fixed him were a kind of gunmetal silver, or otherwise like the cold gray of the sea at dawn. “Does it offend you,” he said. 

“No, not at all, um — ” 

“People don’t generally ask you out,” the very handsome man observed. 

“They don’t.” 

The smile had a sharp edge. “It’s the clothes you’re wearing,” he said. “Do you like them?” 

Another police car went screaming past. The weights went about their slow clicking into the lock inside Remus’s head. “Ah,” he said, at last, getting it. 

“Took you a little longer than I thought it would,” said the very handsome man, “but no matter.” 

“Are you disappointed?” 

“Only that you didn’t wear the cufflinks. Those ones don’t quite go.”

“They were a gift from my mother.” 

They waited together at the crosswalk to head down the Palace Gate. The handsome man, the killer, studied him carefully. “I envy your sentimentality,” he said. 

“Do you?” 

He smiled stiffly. “I don’t know. Can you envy something you’ve never felt? At the end of the day I’m not certain I’d like it.” 

“It can be rather difficult sometimes.” 

“I imagine so.” 

Remus had done a lot of thinking about it, and he’d decided not to bring any weapon with him. He’d figured, based on the profile he’d cobbled together so far, it wasn’t likely the killer would cause some kind of big scene in a restaurant. Perhaps that was why he was being lured away. Remus eyed the sharp edges of the Burberry belt. It did look like it could take somebody’s eye out, if you were really trying. 

They walked together down the Palace Gate, dodging throngs of students and tourists, and turned down a quiet mews. The rain had blown over while Remus was on the Tube, but the street was still wet, and some of the residents had peonies blooming in an array of splendid pinks. This part of London was like another country. It made you think of an entirely different lexicon of Kinks songs than usually came to mind if you lived where normal people did. 

Remus felt funneled like a sheep toward shearing or slaughter, or otherwise like the protagonist in “Common People” by Pulp. “Where are we going.” 

The killer gestured expansively toward the pub on the corner. “In you go,” he said. 

“Here?” 

The killer rolled his eyes, brushing past Remus and elbowing in the door. It was early yet and there were a few empty tables. “Anywhere you like, boys,” called the bartender. 

“I thought we were going to the Boar’s Head,” Remus said as they took a table in the back. 

“No, god no, whyever would I take you there? It’s all stuffy buffoonery, _Modern British Cuisine,_ what does all that even mean, and anyway the chef’s a pig.” He pulled the menu in its little laminate envelope out from behind the caddy containing the salt, pepper, Worcestershire, vinegar, et cetera, and passed it across the table to Remus. “You just tell me what you want and I’ll order at the bar.” 

“I can throw you a couple of quid.” 

“You absolutely will not.” 

“Well what are you having?” 

“Gin and tonic and the shepherd’s pie,” said the killer, sinking deeper into his seat. “The shepherd’s pie’s to die for.” 

Remus handed the menu back to him. “Steak and kidney for me,” he said, “and a Guinness.” 

The killer got up and went to the bar. Remus put his hand in the pocket of his trousers, where it closed around his phone. He just held it for a moment or two and then he let it go. Instead of doing whatever he had been thinking he was going to do, which would obviously just end in disaster, and the end of whatever this was before it had even begun, he sat up straight in the rickety chair and looked around the tiny room. It had been a long time since he’d been to a mews pub in Kensington but the crowd of students and professors and off-duty diplomats and union violinists on break from rehearsal at the Royal Albert Hall was reassuringly familiar. 

A dripping Guinness was slid across the table in his direction by the propulsion of one long white finger. “Cheers,” said the killer, emptying his own little bottle of tonic into what looked like a triple gin in a pint glass with ice. 

“Cheers,” said Remus. 

He took a carefully measured sip. The killer a larynx-fluctuating swig. 

“I imagine you’re wondering why we’re here,” said the killer. “Not in the literal sense, as we’ve addressed that, but in the figurative.” 

“I’m wondering why you gave me these clothes,” Remus told him. 

“Because the head-to-toe Oxfam getup doesn’t suit you,” the killer noted. Not fair necessarily considering some of the stuff Remus usually wore was from M&S. “I’m wondering why you have all those terrible scars.” 

People always looked at him like they were thinking about asking this question, but nobody ever quite had the nerve. “There was a fire at my school when I was growing up.” 

The killer looked into the collar of Remus’s shirt, which he had dared to leave open by a single button. “Are they all over your body?” 

“Seventy percent.” 

The killer looked impressed. “Seventy.” 

“Why are you so interested?” 

“How old were you?” 

“Six.” 

“And you withstood that much pain?” 

Jesus. This was a worse line of questioning than that from any therapist he’d ever been forced to see, whether at university, or in the department, or by his mother, and yet something inside him felt hot. “ _Withstood_ is… maybe not the exact right word.” 

“How so?” 

Remus blinked at him. “You’ve never felt any pain,” he noted. 

“How can you tell that?” 

“You wouldn’t need clarification if you had.” The look in the killer’s eye had him glad they were in public. He made a careful mental note for the profile that the killer disliked being challenged. He also made an equally careful mental note of where the knives were on the table. “What’s your name,” he asked. 

“I know you’re Remus John Lupin.” 

“Now you just sound desperate. Obviously I know you know my name.” 

The bartender came around from the kitchen with their respective pies. She looked between them with a placid smile on her face but at the sight of their expressions it quickly faded. She probably thought she was witnessing some kind of confrontation of rival adulterers. By the time Remus thanked her she was already asking after the nearby tables. 

“Sirius Black,” said the killer. 

“What?” 

“That’s my name.” 

Aside from the obvious, it was a good note for the profile that the killer clearly came from some inbred line of stuffy lords. “You grew up around here?” Remus guessed. 

Black smiled tightly. “Belgravia,” he said. “Frankly this is the nearest decent pub.” He gestured at Remus’s pie. “Eat up.” 

Perhaps it should not have surprised Remus that Black was the most violently messy eater he had seen since grade school. He wolfed everything down like a dog before Remus had made it through the crust of his steak and kidney pie, and then he just sat there watching. 

“You are really exquisite,” Black said. 

Remus washed a too-big, too-hot mouthful down with an inadvisably sized swig of Guinness. “In what way?” 

“Most ways… not the cufflinks.” 

“They really do offend you.” 

“Deeply.” 

“Why?” 

Black downed the rest of his gin and tonic. “They don’t suit the shirt and they don't suit you. The pair I bought you is much nicer.” 

“But why do you care so much about the damn cufflinks of all things?” 

“Are you in the business of psychoanalysis, Remus? I thought they had better qualified people on staff.” 

“Those people aren’t here. It’s just us here.” He looked up, and the stormy eyes met his. Another note for the profile: the unflinching, unblinking eye contact, like a lizard. “We never did talk about why that was.” 

“You changed the subject!” 

“Well, I’m changing it back.” Remus turned back to his pie. “In your time.” 

Black fished an ice cube out of his pint glass and crunched it loudly in his teeth. “I wanted to spend the evening with you.” A warm chill passed up Remus’s spine. “Wanted to hear your voice.” 

“I could arrest you.” 

“Hmm,” Black said, “could you?” He knew as well as Remus did that the evidence was tangential at best. “I wanted to see you in those lovely clothes.” 

Remus bit his lip on _why_. He supposed he already knew why, even if it was like some kind of reverse Stockholm Syndrome or something equally ridiculous. “I have to… in some way endeavor to keep you from killing again,” he said. 

“Oh, Remus, come on. Do you?” 

With a sudden wash of perfect, brutal clarity, he supposed he didn’t. But he said, “Of course.” 

“I suppose we’re at a bit of a stalemate,” Black said. Then, the crux: “Maybe we should agree on a bit of a _detente_.” 

“How so?” 

“I suppose you can be assured I won’t kill you.” 

“Wow,” Remus said. “What largesse.” 

“Don’t flatter me. It’s purely strategic. If you turn up dead, your harebrained notion is obviously correct. Really the only way would be to make it look like suicide, but I’m no good at that, and bringing in somebody else would make it too messy — ” 

“— of course — ”

“— and besides, you’d clearly never kill yourself, if you haven’t already done it by now.” 

Suddenly, Remus wasn’t hungry anymore. “Are you in the business of psychoanalysis, Sirius?” 

Black looked surprised and delighted to hear his own name. Remus couldn’t tell whether that had been a misstep. “Yes,” Black said. “Of course.” 

Remus fixed him in the eyes. It felt like an evil game of chicken. “What do you get out of it. This _detente_.” 

Black bit down hard on another ice cube. “I suppose we both get your life out of it,” he said. “Are you done? I have to be somewhere.” 

“Where?” 

Black scoffed. 

“Right,” Remus said. 

They went out together into the quiet mews, shrugging back into damp raincoats. “Well,” Black said, “I’ll be seeing you.” 

“You will?” 

“I hope so.” He smiled the shark smile again. “Wear the right cufflinks next time. How do the underthings fit?” 

“ _Underthings_?” 

“How do they fit?” 

Remus shook his head. “Fine, thank you.” 

“Silk,” Black noted. “Well, ta.” 

“Ta.” 

Like that he was gone. The hungry night swallowed him. Remus waited there for a moment, just to make sure that was it, because it seemed like it couldn’t possibly be. It was inevitable that Black would untangle out of the streetlit darkness to levy some or another remark. He waited for an embarrassingly long time, and then, at last, cursing himself under his breath, he set off toward the Tube. 

\---

\--

-

**Author's Note:**

> this piece was written for floggingink in grateful acknowledgement of her donations to organizations on the front line of the racial justice movement right now. the story is based on [some headcanons for a killing eve AU](https://yeats-infection.tumblr.com/post/180258346395/what-about-remussirius-like-killing-eve-where) that meg prompted me to come up with a few years ago, before i had ever watched the show. it's named after the pulp album released in 1995 which remains a brilliant political document. 
> 
> i'm doing an [ongoing fundraising drive](https://yeats-infection.tumblr.com/post/620033047264378880/ok-everybody-i-hope-youve-seen-my-post-from-last) to support racial justice organizations and protestors - if you'd like to take part, and i hope you will, please give and message me with proof (on tumblr or at fgreyfx @ gmail) and i will write you something. 
> 
> because it feels wrong to publish HP fic right now without this caveat, i also want to make it clear that all my fic is a no TERFs allowed zone. trans rights are human rights and my works are not for you! i hope you will join me in raising a stiff middle finger to joanne, calling out transphobia when you see it, and donating to charities that support trans people in need, like [mermaids UK](https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/) and/or [the okra project](https://www.theokraproject.com/).


End file.
